


Emotional Noise (Coda)

by missmishka



Series: Emotional Noise [2]
Category: Bourne Legacy (2012)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-05
Updated: 2012-09-05
Packaged: 2017-11-13 15:44:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/505108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missmishka/pseuds/missmishka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After his little game with Byer plays out, Aaron makes a choice.  Set immediately after Emotional Noise but can stand alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Emotional Noise (Coda)

**Author's Note:**

> DISCLAIMER: The usual warnings, I claim no ownership of these characters, they are simply borrowed with love and adoration from the original creators to have their stories, thoughts or circumstances embellished on a little more than the original format had done. Not for any profit.

Aaron keeps his senses sharp for threats as he moves towards the car parked at the end of the block.  He circles it quickly yet carefully; playing like he has nothing to do with the vehicle until he’s sure that he isn’t attracting any undue attention.

The lack of prying eyes is slightly disconcerting, all things considered.  He finds it hard to wrap his mind around the apparent reality that Eric Byer hasn’t told anyone that Aaron had made contact with him.  Aaron gives the trunk of the car a quick series of raps before he can allow himself to think about the possible meaning of that or how he feels about the other man’s belated attempt to shield him from the agency.

He stands at the back bumper of the car until Marta’s head appears over the front seats, face twisted around to look at him.  He smiles at her worried expression and moves along the car to open the passenger side door and slide inside as she settles upright behind the steering wheel.

Her dark eyes are fretful as she looks around them at the shadowed street, looking anxiously for a threat that isn’t there.

“Hey,” he says; not bothering to say something useless like ‘relax’ to put her at ease.

He reaches over to lightly touch the white knuckles of her right hand on the steering wheel and she jumps at the contact.  She stares for a moment at his hand on hers before she turns to look at him, the corner of her lower lip bitten tightly between her teeth. 

He grins in reassurance in the face of her worry and moves his hand up her arm to skim her slender shoulder then curl protectively around the back of her head.  His fingers tangle in her long, dark hair as he rubs soothingly at her scalp while bending forward to press a tender kiss to her lips.  Between the stroke of his fingers and tongue he eases her tensions enough that her teeth cease their abusive restraint on her lower lip and he focuses his mouth on that tenderized area for a moment before pulling back.

His hand stays in her hair; enjoying the silky tangle white further calming her with the contact.  Her eyes, dark with worry, meet his in the dark interior of the vehicle and he keeps his gaze steady as she searches it for any sign of trouble.  When she sees only the confidence that he wants her to, her posture eases and her eyes shimmer with a relief.  A soft smile curls her lips and she looks at him with such trust that he can’t resist bending to kiss her again.

 _She_ allows such gestures.  _She_ responds to his simple attempts to just touch and connect without anything sexual coming of it.  **_She_** trusts him.

He tries to imagine icy blue eyes and narrow lips ever softening to give him such an open expression.  The only image that comes to mind is the tight set of Eric’s jaw and the watchful intensity of his gaze that last time, in the hotel room.  Aaron tries not to long for either expression as he strives to forget all of that.  He has Marta to think of now and, for both their sakes, he has to put the man behind him so that they can get clear of this mess.

“Did you get it?”she asks; her voice barely audible in the darkness yet she still looks around fearfully after speaking as if someone might have heard.

Not for the first time, Aaron wonders if he should have brought her in for this.  She’d been jumpy from the moment he shared his plans to venture back to the States and her nerves had only grown worse with each of the seven days they’d been in Reston, Virginia while he monitored Eric’s movements.

He pulls the Blackberry out of his pocket and sets it carefully on the dash before twisting back through the opening between the front seats to collect his laptop from the bag on the back floorboard.

“That’s it?” she’s looking at the PDA with narrowed eyes.  “That’s what will get us out of this?”

“It’s a start,” is all he says, not about to make any promises to her that he can’t keep. “Go.”

He boots up the computer and pulls out the cord to tether the Blackberry to the laptop.  He connects the PDA and holds the device for a moment, staring at it blankly as he can’t believe he’s gotten it away from Eric without prying it from the other man’s dead hands. 

His thumb hovers over the buttons on the phone as he wonders if it’s a trap, if Eric had left the device behind as bait that he had known Aaron could not resist taking.  He remembers, though, the moment on the phone when he had dropped the hint to the other man that he was in Eric’s home and Eric’s reaction hadn’t been feigned or premeditated.  Aaron wonders if Eric is even aware of the breath that he had sucked in in his surprise before he’d begun to run.

Aaron blinks away thoughts of Eric’s voice calling out his name as Aaron tossed his cell phone down on the folded up newspaper, grabbed the Blackberry and left before Byer could get back to find him still in the house. 

The screen lights up at the press of a button and Aaron stares at the display as he sees the main screen of the device and not a password prompt.  He realizes that Eric doesn’t even lock the device and that realization boggles considering how valuable the other man has always treated the thing to be.  Then he realizes that it’s just another sign of how closely Eric has always guarded the device and he goes back to thinking this might be a trap. 

Eric has never gone anywhere without this damned Blackberry more than a quick grab away yet he had left it behind to go out for his jog while taking the prepaid with him for Aaron’s call?

It didn’t make sense as anything other than bait and Aaron thinking it to be anything else is just more wishful thinking on his part.

Moving quickly in case it is a trap, he thumbs through the menus until he’s in the advanced options to turn off the GPS tracking on the device.  He then starts the hacking program on his laptop and starts it running to pull all the files and data from the PDA to house more securely on his computer. 

He watches the progress on the monitor of his laptop for a moment before he looks away from to study the neighborhood as Marta navigates them out of it.  He never would have pictured Eric as a homeowner; certainly not residing in a sedate DC suburb like this one.  The man was more of an adrenaline junkie than Aaron and Eric so got off on power plays that Aaron would have expected the man to have a cot set up in the Pentagon for his residence.  At the very least, he would have thought an apartment in the city where he could move quickly into the thick of things when something like the Bourne debacle came up.

Instead, Eric sets himself apart from it with a quiet two bedroom that had an actual home feeling to it.  Aaron had slipped into the townhouse two times prior to tonight’s venture and he doesn’t really know what he’d learned or had wanted to learn from his snooping. 

Eric is neat; everything clean and orderly.  Closet and dresser organized with neatly pressed or folded garments ready to be worn.  Bathroom supplies laid out in order of use so that the man could move systematically through the processes of shaving, brushing his teeth, flossing and applying deodorants for the day.  The kitchen cupboards were stocked with basics in reasonable quantities for a person living alone and often eating elsewhere due to work.

The man is alone; no trace of another living soul within the residence aside from a few pictures scattered about of a man and woman who could only be Eric’s parents.  No siblings, no lovers, no friends even in the photos.  There were several pictures of him receiving medals or commendations from Colonels all the way up to the President and a few pictures of him relaxed and smiling with his jet and flight squadron, but they all seemed to be business photos rather than having any real personal appeal.  There wasn’t even a fish or any other negligible kind of pet to be there awaiting Eric attention whenever the man was home.

He’s capable of leaving the agency behind.  That’s the one thing that Aaron learned that he hadn’t expected.  The town house had an office, but it wasn’t a place that Eric seemed to dwell in.  There was no war room up and overrunning his personal space; indicating that he could and actually did have some kind of life that he kept separate from his work.  Aaron had spent almost a week watching the man sit in his recliner doing the crossword or reading.  He’d watched the man squint vainly at the print in the hardcover novels before he caved and put on the reading glasses kept at the ready on the table beside his chair. 

He’d seen Eric truly at ease for the first time in their acquaintance and damned if Aaron didn’t wish that he could have been a part of that.  He could have prepared them meals in that sparkly clean kitchen with all of its fancy gadgets and lazed on the sofa reading paperbacks in the quiet glow of lamplight as they unwound together after a day of work.  He’d have gotten them a dog, something strong and loyal like a Shepherd to go jogging with them and guard the place while they were out.  He would have taken more pictures of Eric smiling and lined every possible surface in the place with those images, inserting himself in enough of the photos that anyone looking at collection would know that he and Eric were _together._

“Back to the hotel?”

Aaron’s thoughts lurch to a stop at Marta’s words and he looks around to see that they’re stopped at a red light and she’s looking to him for direction.

“Not yet.  Drive down towards Wolf Trap then we’ll loop back,” he instructs with a careful look around at the evening traffic. 

They’d gone over the maps endlessly and driven several routes around the area between their hotel in Herndon and Byer’s Reston address.  She was a good driver once her nerves settled and they seem to calm as she focuses on finding a route in her memory for them to take as he suggested.

He watches her and finds himself smiling as he does so.  She’s beautiful; strong and so capable even as all of this is so far outside her comfort zone that anyone else, male or female, would have crumpled under the pressure months ago.  She had her moments of worry and waffling, but everyone in the life has those; especially Aaron. 

He’s on to a third life now; Ken Kitsom, Aaron Cross currently going by Sam Doyle while on this leg of their run for freedom.  He wonders how many more he’ll get as he never would have considered himself to be a cat capable of having nine lives to burn through. 

The drive is quiet as she concentrates on maneuvering through the traffic and he tries to stay out of his head.  He turns the radio on for distraction, flipping idly through the rental car’s satellite radio stations.  He sees the song title on the dashboard display before he hears the song and his finger pauses on the seek button as a wry smile twist his lips.

“I know this one,” Marta says, taking her eyes off the road long enough to smile at him.  “I listened to all of her music in college.”

Aaron takes his hand off the controls and settles back in his seat as he thinks how this woman is even more out of touch with pop culture than Eric.  She’s spent so much of her life in labs that it’s often harder for her to connect with the real world than it is for Aaron to. 

Her people skills are still developing; simple things like seeing people as people and not specimens and taking the time to actually remember a person’s name when they give it to her.

The song on the radio plays over them, taking Marta back to college campuses and Aaron back to Ken struggling through his last days of high school while he grappled with turning eighteen and getting tossed out of Irwin House that had been his shelter for most of his teenaged years.   

Now, because of a stupid crossword clue, the song takes him to thoughts of Eric.  He looks at Marta across the dim interior and wonders if he would be there with her if Eric had just said “stay” or “I miss you” or any of the other things that Aaron thinks he wanted to hear from the man.

_“You love her?”_

He imagines the bite of something like jealousy as Eric’s earlier question replays through his mind and he wonders at the real answer to the question.

His time on the run with Dr. Marta Shearing has been liberating despite the constant threat of being captured or killed.  It’s another relationship born under stressful conditions, but it’s been good. 

She touches him and allows him to touch her.  Sex hadn’t entered into it until a few weeks ago.  Up to that point they had shared rooms and beds and simply talked or held one another. 

The connection to another person had been amazing and Aaron hoarded the memories of just curling protectively around her, fully dressed, as she spoke of science while her hand idly stroked the arm he placed around her waist.  She’d used words and theories too grand for his mind to wrap around with any amount of enhancements; but it hadn’t been about understanding what she said just about listening to her.  Just as she had held him and listened as he told her about his life as Kitsom and his last mission as Cross.

He’d told her about the foolish kid, Devlin, that had gotten himself in the crossfire and ended up dead during the IRA infiltration.  Eric would have told him to just swallow down his memories of the boy, but Devlin had only been seventeen and Aaron couldn’t erase the knowledge that he had fired the bullet to end that young life.  It didn’t ease his mind any to know that Devlin was a very creative bomb maker for the OHN and had planted several of his deadly creations in places aimed to kill innocents in his war with the Police Service of Northern Ireland or the British Army outposts in northern Ireland. 

The kid had been just that, a fucking kid.  Aaron had seen too many of those dead or dying in his time as a soldier and operative.  Hell, even before then, as a kid in halfway houses and rundown shacks in Reno with all the other unwanted youths, he’d watched kids dying from starvation, exposure, drug use or abuse. 

Before he’s aware of their progress or location, Marta is pulling the car to a stop in the parking lot of their hotel and he blinks away from his thoughts to stare at the looming white structure in surprise.

She turns off the ignition and takes out the keys before turning to face him curiously as she unfastens her seat belt. 

“Have you gotten what you need?” she asks, looking eagerly from the computer on his lap and the Blackberry balanced on his right knee.

He taps a button to get rid of the screensaver on the monitor and sees that the file transfer has completed.  Everything that he could have needed from the PDA has been copied to his computer and he’s now safe to dump the phone to insure that Eric has no way of finding or tracking him.

Aaron disconnects the USB cable from the phone and studies the Blackberry for a moment before tucking it back into his pants pocket.  He snaps the laptop closed and gives Marta another quick kiss because she’s starting to frown a little at his lack of a response.

“Let’s go have a look,” he grins and gives her chin a little tweak that makes her smile at him fondly before they get out of the car. 

He reaches for his bag from the back and tucks the laptop inside before moving to join her on the pavement.  He slings the strap over his right shoulder then wraps his left arm around her waist and pulls her in close. 

Her hair smells of the same hotel shampoos that he had used, but somehow it smells delicious on her.  Their lovers pose is not feigned entirely for the hotel staff as they huddle together to cross the lobby to the elevator to take them up to their room.  It is a conscious move, though, on both their parts to make sure that he hides his face in her hair while she obscures her features by tucking against his chest and nuzzling under the flap of his jacket.

Once they’re in the elevator he gives her ear a playful nip and she squirms deeper into his jacket before giving him a reciprocating bite on his pectoral.

“Vampire,” he grimaces and twists away from her teeth.

She only twists her head to grin up at him through the veil of her hair before turning back to press her mouth against the side of his neck and biting in a true blood-sucker fashion.  They arrive at their floor before he can retaliate and she pulls away with a playful wink.  She moves away from him to start quickly down the hallway, but he’s quick to yank her back and hates how his reflexive move quickly wipes the playfulness from her.

He doesn’t apologize for it, though, as he moves past her to carefully check the corridor before approaching their room.  She stays back without protest as he slips the keycard in to unlock the door the steps into the room while pulling out the Sig tucked in the back waist of his jeans under the cover of his jacket.  He does a sweep of the room, clearing all the corners before resetting the safety on the gun and putting on the bedside table then moving to usher her in.

“This will never stop, will it?” she moves past him to sit heavily on the bed.  “You’re always going to be like this, aren’t you?”

He hears the fraying of the tenuous bonds holding them together but he can offer no denial or protest to the words.  He’d viralled in and was now permanently what the project had wanted him to be; a highly skilled and proficient operative.  Even if they slipped the government’s noose, Aaron would never lose the training, instincts or habits that had made him a world-class spy.

He moves to stand before her, takes her face in his hands and tips it back to place a gentle kiss to her forehead, offering consolation without apology.  Her hands rise to wrap loosely around his wrists as she tips her head further back to puts his lips against her own.

The kiss is soft and lingering, without the bitter taint of regrets as he might have expected after her words. 

One thing that he has learned about her is that Marta is far too smart for regret.  She’ll analyze everything down to its origins and focus on the basest emotions to avoid the big ones that tended to weigh a person down; like love, hate, sorrow or regret.  She’s capable of feeling them all, but knows that it does anyone any good to wallow in them.

He does love her and he tells her that with the brush of his thumbs over her porcelain cheeks as he pulls back.  She turns to kiss his thumb before he pulls away completely.

While he pulls out his laptop she begins to unlace her sneakers to settle in for the night.  He moves to the desk to set the computer down and plug in the battery pack as the system boots back up.  He hears her shrugging out of her coat and moving around to collect her night clothes and it’s easy to envision her going through the now familiar motions.  He knows her routine inside and out, has watched her do everything from dressing, undressing, showing, shaving, styling her hair and applying make-up to the basic acts of eating and sleeping.

She disappears into the bathroom for her nightly rituals of showing, shaving and applying some sweet smelling mess to her face while he begins scouring over the files he’s gotten access to. 

He has a contact list that’s virtually useless to him as Eric is careful not to actually name the contacts that go with the numbers in his substantial address book.  For instance, there’s no entry for the President of the United States, but Aaron knows damned good and well that Byer has the man’s direct line.  Knowing that it will take more time than he has for the night to go through trying to put actual names and faces with the entries, he moves past the contacts.

He finds some evidence of Eric’s paranoia in how all the files seem to be encrypted and there are no saved messages in the texts or emails.  He pulls the Blackberry out to tether back to the computer so he can run a program to try retrieving some of the deleted messages while he starts another program to start breaking the encrypted files. 

While the technology goes to work attacking itself, he moves to take off his boots and sheds his jacket. 

Over the sounds of water running in the shower he hears the familiar chirping of the Blackberry and he freezes in the process of draping his coat over the back of the chair.  He turns slowly toward the device as it continues to ring and he knows he should ignore it to allow the retrieval program to run without disruption.

Only one person could be calling it now, though, and Aaron finds himself answering the call and bringing the receiver to his ear before he can even think to stop himself.

“Where are you?”

Aaron laughs at the demand in that question, thinking how redundant they all would be if people in their line of work just _answered_ a simple question like that.

“This isn’t a joke, Aaron,” Eric’s voice is sharp as a blade as it carries over the line.  “I need it back.  You _have to_ bring it back.”

“Or what?”

“Do you honestly think it’s as simple as turning off the GPS on the phone?” he can imagine Eric pacing through his home and wonders if the man is upstairs or down.  “If I report it lost _they_ activate the tracking _in_ the phone.”

“You almost sound like you really don’t want them to find me,” Aaron disconnects the phone from the laptop and moves to look worriedly out the window, just in case.

“I don’t.  Aaron, I…”

Aaron actually holds his breath, wondering if the man is about to say any one of the many things that he wants to hear.

“I just need it back.  I’m sure you’ve already copied the contents, bring the phone back tonight and no one ever needs to know that you had it.”

“There’s nothing on it, is there?” Aaron sighs at the laptop working away at decrypting the hacked files. 

“Breadcrumbs.  Try as you might you’ll never navigate your way out of the woods using them.  I set it up for my understanding and only I get use what’s on there. It was a good idea, but you’re far from the first to have had it.”

“Is there any way for me to get out of these woods myself?”

“Not as long as you have Gretel with you,” Eric’s message is clear; dump the girl and save himself.

Aaron ends the call on that note and moves to knock on the bathroom door.

“Heading out for a bite.  Back in thirty,” he calls out to her when she cuts off the water to hear him.

“What?” he hears her wet feet slapping against tile before the door is yanked open.  “Out where?”

He looks at her dripping wet, clutching a towel to her chest and knows what his response to Eric’s message is.  He smoothes back a lock of hair clinging wetly to her cheek and gives her another kiss.

“Just down the road.  Be ready to go when I get back.”

“Go?” she frowns and shifts the towel around to try covering herself better as if he hasn’t already seen every inch of her naked.  “I thought we were-“

“We’ve been here too long already,” he moves to put his boots back on, making plans with every movement.

“What’s wrong?” she follows him, leaving wet foot prints across the carpeting.  “Did you find something?”

“It’s ok,” he takes hold of her shoulders.  “Finish your bath then get dressed.  Get us packed and when I get back, we’ll eat then go check out, ok?  No reason to panic.”

“Right,” she twists the towel in her hands and moves to sit back on the bed.  “You’re off and running and that’s no reason for me to worry?”

“I’m coming back for you,” he follows to kneel before her.  “We just need to get lost again for a little longer and I have something to do before we can go.  Trust me.”

She looks into his eyes and he can see that she does trust him even before she gives a nod to signify her agreement. 

“Sorry, I just-“

“You never,” he interrupts with a quick kiss, “never have to apologize to me.”

She looks like she’s about to issue another ‘sorry’ before she looks down at herself dripping all over the bedding.

“I’ll just go and finish up then,” she concludes with a weak smile before moving back to the bathroom.

He stares at the door for a few moments after its closure then moves to grab his bag and tuck the Blackberry back in his pocket before snagging up his key and jacket to bolt from the room. 

Part of him wants to get in the rental and take it back to Reston.  He wants to see what would happen if he met with Eric on his private territory; wonders if the company man would show up or if he’d get to actually meet the person that _lived_ in that town house.  The pull is so strong that his hands are actually shaking as he pushes the call button for the elevator so he moves to race down the stairs instead to burn off the energy of nerves.

He’s calm and collected, though, when he steps out into the lobby, doing nothing to draw attention to him as he moves to exit the hotel.  He walks to a café a few blocks away and orders some sandwiches while scanning the college aged clientele for a likely candidate for his plan.  He settles on a rather studious looking girl, bent over a Kindle like she’s reading the secrets of the universe on the tablet.

He leaves the café with a bag of food and two cups of rich, black coffee while the girl gets the Blackberry and Eric’s address.  He’s relatively confident that she’ll take the phone over like a good Samaritan, but even if she forgets or decides to keep it then the government will be tracking her not Aaron.

His pocket feels lighter without the device, but there’s no easing of the burden on his shoulders as he returns to the hotel room.   He gives the door a series of knocks before opening it to assure Marta that it’s him returning and as he steps into the room she looks up from the luggage she’s packing. 

Her eyes lock with his and then she smiles; big, bright and relieved as well as welcoming. 

The weight falls from his shoulders and he moves towards her and whatever future that they have together.


End file.
